Ninetales (キュウコン, Kyūkon?), known as the Fox Pokémon, is a yellow nine-tailed fox, based on the kitsune, a Japanese fox spirit. Ninetales is highly intelligent and able to understand human speech, but also vengeful; Ninetales have been recorded as putting a 1,000 year curse on anyone who grabs one of their tails, which is a focus of the plot in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team and Red Rescue Team. Ninetales are notable for having multiple characteristics of the Psychic- and Ghost-types, such as the ability to hypnotise through eye contact, understand human speech, psychokinetically control flames, and communicate through mental links and images, but have never been listed as anything but the Fire-type. They, along with Vulpix, have keen senses of smell, hearing, and sight. It can only be obtained by using a Fire Stone on a Vulpix. Its Japanese name Kyūkon comes from a combination of the Japanese number 9, kyu, and the sound of a barking fox. Many legends surround this Pokémon, one of which states that Ninetales was born when 9 saints were united and reincarnated as this Pokémon (compare with Spiritomb, who was created from the souls of 108 evil spirits and forever bound to an Odd Keystone as eternal punishment).
In the anime, Ash and the gang find an abandoned mansion and Brock is deceived by a Ninetales, whose master strongly resembles Brock.
Since it has nine tails, the Pokémon's name is very commonly misspelled as "Ninetails." Even the Game Boy Color port of the Pokémon Trading Card game uses this misspelling.
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